Wouldn't Miss It For the World
by daltoned
Summary: They're men now, and Blaine is marrying Kurt and Sam is sitting in his Ohio apartment with unwashed dishes in the sink and a guitar with broken strings sitting dusty in the closet.


"Sam?"

Sam's breath catches in his throat at the hopeful tone in Blaine's voice. He digs his fingernails into the stiff denim of his jeans and licks his lips, mouth suddenly dry. "Yeah?" His voice is slightly raspy.

Blaine hesitates, and Sam can imagine him gripping the phone tighter, getting up to pace his living room. The living room he shares with Kurt. "I…I'm getting married."

Sam had known this was coming. He had known this was coming from from the day that he saw them at the coffee shop, blushing and with sparkling eyes and so clearly, so _achingly_ in love. His chest tightens all the same, his heart stopping for a beat before picking up again in double time. He doesn't know why he asks—the answer is obvious—but he rubs salt into his own wounds all the same: "Kurt?"

Blaine exhales, the breath shaky, and Sam can hear the dopey smile in his voice when he says, "Yes," and Sam can only remember when that grin was directed at him—oh so long ago, back when they were just kids. They're men now, and Blaine is marrying Kurt and Sam is sitting in his Ohio apartment with unwashed dishes in the sink and a guitar with broken strings sitting dusty in the closet.

"Congratulations," Sam remembers to say, before the silence becomes noticeable and awkward, before his pain become audible.

Blaine hesitates again, and Sam hates that—hates how Blaine feels like he has to calculate his words before saying them, like he has to be _careful_ around Sam. They were never anything but honest with each other—Blaine is never anything but honest, full stop—but now it feels like their connection is a fragile little glass bird, hopping around scant inches from a steep cliff drop. Seconds from smashing into a thousand glittering fragments.

Blaine lets out a little huff. "I wanted to know if you would be my best man, " he says in a rush, the hope in his voice painful to Sam's ears. "I…I just want you by my side." He swallows. "Kurt's asking Finn, and I can always ask David or Mike but—"

"I'll do it." Sam's not sure why he said it; it's only going to reopen old wounds and Blaine and Kurt don't deserve that on their wedding night. But he says it, and he can imagine Blaine's delighted smile, the image of how his eyes would crinkle at the corners and he would look like a puppy waiting to be fed still crisp-clear in Sam's mind.

"Really?"

Sam's heart aches at the cautious delight in Blaine's voice, like he can't really believe that Sam just agreed to it. "Yeah, man." Sam forces a smile, even though he knows Blaine can't see it. "Wouldn't miss it for the world."

Blaine's wearing a black tux with a white bow-tie (_of course_, Sam thinks ruefully), a pink carnation pinned to his lapel. His hair is gelled and his face is shaved, and he reminds Sam so much of a high school Blaine that he has to turn away for a moment and just _breathe_. Sam clasps his hands behind his back and sticks to the edges of the crowds, nodding at people that he vaguely recognises—Blaine's parents are conspicuously absent, he notes with a twinge of long-old anger at Mr. and Mrs. Anderson—and trying, unsuccessfully, to block _I do_ from his memory.

Blaine and Kurt are talking with Rachel and Finn by the bay windows. Their fingers are twined together and twin rings gleam in the warm light of the setting sun. Blaine looks flushed with happiness, his lips pink and his profile outlined by the sun's rays. He looks so good—and _so _off-limits—and so happy and bouncing and Kurt's glowing too but Sam just feels empty and slightly lost. He wants to hate Kurt but he just can't—not when Kurt makes Blaine smile like that. (Sam used to make Blaine smile like that.

He starts to turn away, but the calling of his name stops him in his tracks. He freezes, not sure if he wants to speak to the owner of the voice, but then it's too late and Blaine is already bounding across the room.

"Sam, hey." Blaine stops just inside Sam's personal space, and for a moment Sam can pretend that it's _them_ getting married—Sam and Blaine, not Blaine and Kurt, but then he hears Kurt's bright laugh and the illusion is gone, merely a fleeting moment that never really happened except for in Sam's mind.

"It was a good ceremony, wasn't it?" Blaine says, a proud tone to his voice. Sam sort of wants to punch him for being an oblivious asshole—_I'm still in love with you, you dick_—but Blaine wouldn't be Blaine if he wasn't an oblivious asshole now and then, and he'd rather have Blaine as a best friend than not at all.

"Yeah," he agrees, because it _had_ been. Everything had gone quickly and smoothly, and Kurt certainly knew how to put together a wedding. Sam bites his lip. There was just one thing he had to know—yet another act of masochism that he _needed_. "Just…are you happy? Like, properly happy?" He looks over at Finn, Rachel and Kurt to avoid seeing Blaine's expression.

"Yeah." Blaine's face is soft when Sam finally looks at him. "Yeah, I am. It's…I never thought I'd find somebody like him, you know? And there he was."

_I know what you mean_.

Sam stitches a smile on his face, and stuffs his hands into his pockets, slouching slightly. "I…good. That's good, then." He ducks his head, bangs falling into his eyes. He doesn't bother to brush them away.

Blaine's watching him, with wide hazel-gold eyes. He's still as short as ever, several inches shorter than Sam and he seems so small and young in the fresh glow of love, his body too small to contain the sheer love rolling off him in waves. _Don't you remember us?_ Sam wants to ask. _Don't you remember when_ I_ was the one you looked at like you look at him now? Or am I just kidding myself? You never really looked at me like _that _, not really._

"Thank you for coming," Blaine says, and Sam can see Kurt approaching now, his matching pink carnation pinned on his chest too, marking him as Blaine's. Marking Blaine as his.

Sam locks gazes with Blaine, and for a moment he forgets how to breathe again, his chest so tight that he's scared his ribs might crack inwards, puncturing his lungs and bleeding emotion everywhere. He swallows. Looks at Kurt again, at how Kurt's eyes automatically seek out Blaine, a small smile curving his lips. Thinks about his own empty, cold apartment, with the fading Star Wars posters and the Dalek bubble-bath container with the cracked lid, the silence he hears when he wakes in the middle of the night. He thinks of Blaine being happy, then, and his chest loosens, all the breath leaving him as silent as an evening breeze and he takes another breath, then another.

"Like I said," he says, "wouldn't miss it for the world."


End file.
